Thief Eyes (25 page)

Freki’s blood steamed as it soaked into the earth, much as the mead of poetry once had. The blood on my hands steamed, too. That steam stung my eyes, and I blinked. When I opened them again, my hands were clean and Freki was gone.

Both ravens launched into the sky, and the little birds followed them.

“Have a care,” Muninn’s wingbeats said as he disappeared into the clouds. “If we both have good fortune, we will not meet again.”

Cold rain soaked through my sodden jeans and jacket. Ari and I watched, still holding hands, as the birds disappeared out of sight. Only then did I realize that the mead skin was gone, as well as Hallgerd’s coin. The spell was done, I thought, the coin blank. Muninn didn’t need it—but even ordinary ravens liked shiny things.

The sound of a car on the gravel lane made us jump. A door slammed, then another. Katrin came running up the hillside, a notebook clutched in one hand. She stopped short when she saw us, as if she couldn’t believe we were real. “You’re all right?” she asked in Icelandic.

“For certain definitions of all right, yeah,” Ari said, also in Icelandic. A wry smile tugged at his face. Katrin ran forward, dropped the notebook, and grabbed him in her arms. “Thank God,” she whispered, then drew away and took my hands.

The last spark of fire in me leaped at her touch, and some small splinter of that spark passed from me to her. “I would have taken it all,” Katrin said, in English now. Rain made strands of her flyaway hair stick to her face. “I was hoping—to cast the spell, and take your mother’s fire, and set things right.”

I said nothing. For just a moment, I wished Katrin could have taken the fire instead of Mom, too. But then Ari broke in in Icelandic with, “Oh, yeah, because that would have been
so
much better,” and I knew I didn’t mean it. I never, ever wanted Ari to miss his mother like I missed mine.

“It’s okay,” I said in English, though of course it wasn’t. “It’s—it’s over, anyway.” That was a start. But I felt more sobs rising within me. “I lost her,” I said, trying to keep the sobs inside as once I’d tried to contain a blazing fire. “I lost everything.”

“Not everything,” a strangled voice said.

I looked up. My father stood a short distance down the hill, his hair sticking out in every direction, his jacket dripping rainwater. He looked like he might shatter into a million pieces if he took a single step.

Or maybe that was me. My legs shook as I drew away
from Katrin and walked to him. Dad grabbed me in his arms, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. I wouldn’t have pulled away for the world, though. More tears came, the tears I’d spent a year trying to hide from him.

“I thought I’d lost you both,” Dad said.

I heard the whisper of wingbeats in the air. Dad heard it, too, and we both fell silent.

“I will remember her, Haley,” Muninn said, just before he slipped out of hearing. “I remember all who live here, always.”

Chapter 18

I
t was because of Jared that Dad and Katrin had found us.

For three months they’d searched, Katrin insisting there was magic involved, Dad not believing her. Then Muninn’s spell kicked in, leaving Dad wondering why he’d stayed in Iceland so long, and leaving Katrin with an apartment full of pictures she couldn’t quite focus on and an entire room she kept finding reasons not to enter.

But then Jared called Dad, who said of course he didn’t have a daughter. So Jared tried Katrin, whose phone number Dad had given him the day we disappeared, before he’d gotten an Iceland-friendly cell phone. Katrin didn’t remember us, either, but she remembered Thorgerd’s spell for restoring lost memories. Somehow, she convinced Dad to cast the spell with her.

It took them a while to get all the supplies—you can’t exactly buy raven feathers at the mall—but in the end the spell worked, and they headed straight for Hlidarendi. Dad drove while Katrin pored over the spellbook, hoping she’d get there in time to cast the spell instead of me.

They explained all of this as Katrin drove us back to Reykjavik and Ari and I wolfed down the hot dogs we’d picked up from a gas station along the way. Or rather from a grill set up outside the gas station—everyone was outside again, because of the earthquake at Hlidarendi this time, and we passed several more emergency vehicles.

“It was awful,” Dad said—meaning Muninn’s spell, not the earthquake. He glanced back at me, as if to make sure I was still there. “I knew I’d lost something important, only I couldn’t figure out what.” Beside him, Katrin’s hands tightened on the wheel.

It was already midafternoon. Time always seemed to get away from me when Muninn was around. I thought of my run by the harbor, of how I’d heard a raven’s cry and the beating of wings. Like all the other time I’d lost, those six hours had been Muninn’s fault, not Hallgerd’s.

Once the hot dogs were gone, Ari fell asleep in the backseat, his head resting on my shoulder. I saw Dad watching us again; Dad saw me watching him and quickly looked away. I stroked Ari’s hair, which felt
just
like bear fur, and wondered what on earth I was going to tell Jared when I called him.

*  *  *

Flosi threw himself at Ari the instant we opened the door to his apartment, before he could even pull off his shoes. The quake hadn’t reached as far as Reykjavik, so it was safe to go inside. Once the sheepdog had gotten his entire wriggling body into Ari’s lap on the couch, it was Ari’s and my turn to explain.

We told Dad and Katrin everything, in English for Dad’s benefit. They listened, not saying a word, though Katrin’s arms gripped her chair and Dad ran his hands through his hair so many times I was sure it would never lie flat again.

Neither of them spoke when we were through, either, not for long moments. Then Dad turned, slowly, to Katrin. “There was a time,” he told her, “when I said that you were crazy. I’d like to take that back now, if I may.”

“And I as well,” Ari said. Flosi had fallen asleep in his lap, and Ari absently scratched the dog’s ears.

Katrin shut her eyes, as if their apologies pained her. “I wish I had been crazy, and that none of this had happened. I wish—” She looked at Dad; he looked at her. They didn’t look like they hated each other anymore. They looked more like—not lovers. Like old friends who’d been through the same war together. The war in which their children were lost and found again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I never should have run. If I hadn’t run, Mom might not—”

“Haley.” Dad’s voice was quiet as I’d ever heard it. “This is not your fault. If anyone is to blame—” He buried his face in his hands. “It’s me, Haley.”

“Not only you,” Katrin said.

“Oh sure, let’s all fight over whose fault it is,” Ari said. “Can I have a turn, too?” Flosi stirred in his lap and let out a single woof. “See? Even Flosi wants his chance at feeling guilty.” Ari pressed his face into the dog’s fur. His shoulders shook, laughing or sobbing, I couldn’t tell.

Katrin watched him, her expression strange. “You were really a bear?”

“Oh, yeah, that reminds me.” Ari’s shaking stilled as he nudged Flosi from his lap and took off his jacket. “You don’t want a bear in the apartment. They run around, break all the furniture—it is a problem. For now, I will be human.”

Katrin gave a shaky laugh, but Dad only sighed and ran his hands through his hair once more. “Just like us all,” he said.

The sun was down and Ari and I were yawning by the time Katrin drove Dad and me back to the guesthouse. Along the way Dad and Katrin told us how the earthquakes in the Westfjords had lots of people confused, while the quake at Hlidarendi had them worried because of all the volcanoes nearby. There’d be no more earthquakes because of my magic, or Hallgerd’s, either, but no
one knew that yet. At least no one was seriously hurt, in either place, because Icelanders built for quakes. I guess you do that when your home is one big geologic event waiting to happen.

In the car, Flosi gave my hands a thorough licking over. His nose got under Ari’s handkerchief bandage and it fell away, revealing the puckered skin below. I handed the handkerchief to Ari, but he shook his head. “Keep it. You never know when you’ll hurt yourself again.”

He meant it as a joke, but I glanced at the scars on my palms, then back at my burned wrist. I remembered the fire that had burst through my skin, and I shook my head. “I’m done with that,” I said, but I kept his handkerchief anyway.

When we reached the guesthouse, Ari and I looked at each other, suddenly a little uncomfortable, neither of us sure what to say.

“You still owe me a song,” I said at last, and turned away before Ari could see my eyes stinging. I hurried after Dad into the guesthouse.

By the time Dad and I got inside, I wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week, but there was something I had to know first. “Were you and Mom really planning a divorce?”

Dad let out a breath, and something of the old lost look returned to his face. But I waited, and finally he looked right at me and said, “I don’t know, Haley. I honestly don’t.”

“Did you talk about getting one?”

“No. That was my first mistake, not talking to your mother. I’m not always much good at talking—I guess you know that. Maybe we could have worked things out. I don’t
know
.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Here. You should let Jared know you’re okay.”

I was so tired. I couldn’t deal with Jared now. “I’ll call him in the morning, I—”

“Don’t be like me,” Dad said. “Talk to him. Don’t worry about the charges. Take as long as you need.”

Jared picked up on the first ring. “Haley?” The strained hope in his voice nearly broke my heart.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“You’re not going to disappear again?”

“No,” I promised him. “It’s over.”

I told Jared everything, too, crying all over again as I did. Talking to him felt good. I realized just how much I’d missed him.

We talked for a really long time.

I had no idea what time it was when I finally fell into bed. I barely had time to grab Mortimer—he wasn’t a bear, but he’d do—before I fell asleep.

I dreamed I walked on a green summer hillside, dandelions blooming, gulls circling up above. There was no fire, just a gently trickling stream and a distant figure walking
toward me. As the figure drew closer, I recognized her. “Mom!”

She smiled and reached for me. Yet as our hands met, flames flared between us. Mom turned to hot ash, sifting like snow through my fingers. I would have screamed then, only the fire had burned my voice away. I ran, knowing any moment I would burn, too
.

But I didn’t. A cool breeze caressed my neck, and I found myself jogging along a path beside a harbor. The sky above shone with stars. When I looked down, I saw a white fox running by my side
.

“At least now I know what happened,” I said to him. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

Freki didn’t answer. He just cocked an ear in my direction as we ran on, the little fox keeping me company through the rest of the night, clear on to morning
.

Wind gusted as Dad and I walked between the blocky stone walls of Thingvellir two days later. Rain spat from the sky, and I shivered in my jacket. The wind felt good, though. I didn’t think I’d ever mind the cold again.

We stopped when we reached the Law Rock, and together we stared out at the river. The geese were gone now, leaving behind grasses that blazed bright shades of orange and red. Most of the tourists had left, too. Only a few people walked the path behind us.

“So this is where it happened,” I said.

Dad turned to look at me, his eyes damp. “I miss her, Haley. You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Either you loved someone or you didn’t
. Was it ever that simple?

Dad shoved his hands into his pockets. “Can you ever forgive me?”

My throat hurt, but I forced myself to speak. “I’m working on it,” I said, and meant it.

We walked back down the path in silence, to the Hotel Valholl, where we were meeting Ari and Katrin for dinner. Ari and I had slept most of yesterday away. We’d seen each other only briefly, when Dad and Katrin brought us to the police station to file a report. Apparently the police had thought it might have been Dad and Katrin’s fault we’d disappeared, that maybe they’d abducted us or something, and Mom before us, too. They seemed to believe Ari’s and my story that we’d run away, though, right down to our claiming that Ari had dyed his hair and I’d cut mine to make us harder to recognize.